


death is the road to awe

by callunavulgari



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Friendship/Love, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time you meet Silena, you shove her head into the toilet. You laugh at her as she struggles and you don't even have your brothers with you this time, no need for backup. She's just another silly Aphrodite girl. When you finally let her up, she's bright red and heaving for breath, a wet lock of dark hair hanging loose against her forehead. The first thing she does is clock you in the face, teeth bared in an ugly snarl. It's a good punch, so you grin at her and punch back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	death is the road to awe

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [femslash february](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/femslash+february), kiss-me-cait23 left me the prompt: "This may be a long shot, but I've been reading The Iliad in Intermediate Greek and I'm having all kinds of Achilles feels. I would love anything that explored the Achilles/Patroclus parallels between Clarice and Selena, because as soon as I saw that coming I DIED." Unfortunately this morphed more into a Clarisse feelz fic than anything, but one of the most important things about Achilles and Patroclus was their deep love for each other, friendship or otherwise, so I think I... kind of didn't fail so hard at the prompt.

One of your earliest memories is of a little stray cat that your mom used to feed occasionally. Her fur was mismatched and mangy looking, patches of orange and black and white that marred her coat like tumors. One of the patches of orange fur made a kind of lopsided oval over its one remaining eye, the other little more than a hole in its head. You don't know where it came from, but it liked to sun itself on the shingles outside your window, stretched out on its back with its limbs akimbo.  
  
It was the ugliest damn cat that you'd ever seen and you remember how you used to chase it around the yard, hissing until it darted into the brush.  
  
.  
  
You've never been a pretty girl. Your thighs are too big, even when the rest of you is little more than kind of chubby. They look wrong on you, like someone stuck somebody's legs on your body. The boys in your class call you mean names, thunder thighs and Clarisse-obese and the girls won't talk to you. They think you're weird for liking sports, that you're weird for not obsessing over boys and being angry all the time.  
  
You aren't actually angry all the time. Just for most of it. It's hard to be in a good mood when the rest of the world is doing its best to make you cry.  
  
(You only cry once, when one of the boy's that you thought you were friends with gets you a yellow rose for Valentine's Day, then tells you that his mother made him do it and storms off.  
  
You never actually talk to him again, though when you see him in the halls, he never looks you in the face.)  
  
.  
  
The summers are hot in Phoenix, a dry kind of heat that makes your lips crack—your skin long for a pool of water to soak in. You take a lot of baths during the summers, cool ones, your skin greedily absorbing as much moisture as it can. A lot of the kids in your school go to Castles N' Coasters, the waterpark in the northern part of the city, but your family has never been entirely well off. You aren't poor, but trips to the waterpark are a _treat_ , not as easy as a trip to the mall or a lunch at Denny's.  
  
When you do go, you wear swim trunks and one of your oldest, most well-worn t-shirts. It's big on you, going to your thighs, spacious even around your budding breasts. It's comfortable and you don't feel half as weird as you did the one time that you'd worn one of the one piece suits that your mom had gotten for you.  
  
When you're in fourth grade, they pull you aside on a waterslide and tell you that you can't go down the slide unless you're wearing a 'proper suit.' You sneer at the pretty little barbie doll woman and stalk all the way back down the stairs, fuming as you go.  
  
You don't go back to the park again.

.

Your mom never keeps it from you about who your dad is, because that's the type of person she is. Brutally honest like a punch in the face. So you've always known about Ares, even though when you were a kid it was more of a fantastical power trip. You would walk around school, sneering at all the normal people, because you didn't care if they thought you were weird or fat or ugly. Your dad was a _god_  
  
(The power trip stops the first time you really meet your dad, huge and bulky and terrifying enough that you flinch. You can't even help it. Your mom fought in the Vietnam War, so you're used to people who intimidate you—used to woman who you respected so much, even if she was a little scary.  
  
Your father just looks at you, this little girl flinching back from him like a mouse and _sneers_ —  
  
You recognize the sneer. It's the same one you see in the mirror.)  
  
.  
  
You go to Camp Half Blood part way through seventh grade and its so _different._  
  
Your brothers and sisters aren't quite like you, but they're close enough. They don't judge you for being you, if anything, they celebrate having a new sister who can kick so much ass.  
  
Your first year there, you decide that no one is ever going to look down on you again. If that means becoming the bully, then whatever. Bring it on. You've never needed to be liked.  
  
.  
  
The first time you meet Silena, you shove her head into the toilet. You laugh at her as she struggles and you don't even have your brothers with you this time, no need for backup. She's just another silly Aphrodite girl.  
  
When you finally let her up, she's bright red and heaving for breath, a wet lock of dark hair hanging loose against her forehead. The first thing she does is clock you in the face, teeth bared in an ugly snarl. It's a good punch, so you grin at her and punch back.  
  
It isn't the best first meeting.  
  
.  
  
You don't really like Silena much, but you respect her well enough for not just being another of the dim-witted Aphrodite girls who think their tits are their only weapon. Silena took self defense classes when she was ten and before that she was a gymnast, a dancer, and took tae kwon do classes on the weekend. Her dad owns a coffee shop in Maryland and later, when you're both sixteen and on the cusp of war, you find out that she has an old beat-up truck that she treats like a child.  
  
Really, she's not half bad.

.  
  
You have your first kiss when you're fourteen and crouched in one of the pegasi's stalls with Silena in your lap. It's an angry kiss, clacking teeth and too much spit, but then, you're good at being angry. Your hands on her hips and her tongue down your throat, secrecy coating the roof of your mouth like peanut butter.  
  
.  
  
You become good friends and sometimes more, learning her like the back of your hand—how she loves horses and love stories and how she sometimes hates being a daughter of Aphrodite.  
  
(You map every inch of her skin, linking the freckles on her back with your thumb like constellations. You learn the texture of her hair and the feel of her skin, her lips against yours.)  
  
.  
  
When Silena falls in love with Charles Beckendorf, you try not to care. And the sad thing about it is that you don't really care, not like that. She lights up around him, face radiant and lovely and you might be a bit stung, but she'll be your best friend even if you aren't kissing.  
  
.  
  
When you first start liking Chris, Silena helps you. She gives you advice, waggled eyebrows when she talks about how to please a boy instead of a girl. It's not like that, just yet, not sexual—just... interest. You're fond of him, have been ever since he showed up at your mom's house with his head like a plate full of scrambled eggs.  
  
.  
  
You went on one double date together.  
  
Just the one, Chris at your side and Charles at hers.  
  
Neither of them noticed her foot stroking yours under the table, her biting back a smile and you stammering for words until you finally got fed up and kicked her in the shin.  
  
.  
  
When Charles dies, you hold her—let her sob into your shoulder and snarl at anyone who tries to disturb the two of you. You kick all of your brothers and sisters to the Hermes cabin for the night and curl up with her, her arms like a vice around your ribs.  
  
.  
  
After his death, she kisses you just once. It's a chaste little thing the morning you wake up together in an empty cabin, her hair tangled and the skin beneath her eyes bruised dark.  
  
She touches your cheek and kisses you, quirking a watery smile as she pulls away.  
  
"You're beautiful, you know," she tells you. You scoff at her.  
  
"Don't patronize me, Beauregard," you sneer.  
  
Her eyes go soft and she runs a hand through your hair, perfect nails scratching across your scalp.  
  
"You are," she shrugs.  
  
.  
  
She takes you riding four days before she steals your armor—four days before you have her corpse in your arms, broken ribs beneath your palms.  
  
"Would you forgive me if I did something terrible?" she asks you, your horses grazing in the grass nearby.  
  
"Of course," you say automatically, because to her, _terrible_ means forgetting to make her bed in the morning or not having enough time to wash down all of the pegasi.  
  
She smiles at you, your little Aphrodite girl with so much fire in her soul.  
  
.  
  
When she dies, you hurt more than you've ever hurt before. You sit there, her hand in yours and a confession still in the air, and you hiss, "She was a hero, understand? A hero."


End file.
